muzzleloader

[mx'r]

[

I always say, once the animal is down...then the work truly begins.[/quote]

. We got fairly fast at the quatering with two people. About 20 minutes without gutting. Works great, just cant hit the gut.

[Irving]

So do you just leave the rest of the animal (all the blood, guts, bones, etc) in a neat little pile for the scavengers to eat? I suppose without like 80% of the animal, it'd be much lighter. What do you do to keep the meat cold?

[sniper7]

So do you just leave the rest of the animal (all the blood, guts, bones, etc) in a neat little pile for the scavengers to eat? I suppose without like 80% of the animal, it'd be much lighter. What do you do to keep the meat cold?

the meat is everything you take with you. the only thing left are the ribs, which are mostly bone and little meat and the tenderloins on the inside (you have to gut the animal to get to them.

Inevitably some scavengers show up, mostly camp robbers (birds) and I always toss them lots of the excess fat or junk meat (where the bullet went in and out and contaminated the meat or it is destroyed with blood that has been pumping out of the animal.

as for cooling, try to keep it in the shade while you are working, direct sunlight is the worst for it. the temps are usually cooler up high so not too much to worry about and if you get it out quick it isn't an issue. biggest thing is getting the hide off so the meat cools quickly. the hide can keep in a lot of heat, and will decrease the time that carcass takes to bloat.

all my shots have been through the heart and lungs on elk and deer and antelope (except my first antelope i shot archery through the liver and then the gut) so some air escapes the cavity, but once you cut into the gut and puncture a stomach or intestine...the smell can be pretty awful.
I can handle elk and deer fine, but I have found antelope to have some of the nastiest smelling internals out there.

I have gone back to the carcass a day or a few days after the kill and most of it has been spread out if a bear finds it, a lot is eaten away by the bears and coyotes or lynx or mountain lion etc. I have gone back a year later and found almost no trace a carcass ever existed where I killed it, just bones strewn about, bleach white.
mother nature definitely takes care of the rest. I never feel like I waste anything, just give some back to the rest of the creatures that I almost never see.